Calpurnia Flashcards
“Hush your mouth! Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house’s yo’ comp’ny, and don’t you let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you was so high and mighty! Yo’ folks might be better’n the Cunninghams but it don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin’ ‘em—if you can’t act fit to eat at the table you can just set here and eat in the kitchen!”
This is a moral lesson from Calpurnia to respect people’s differences even if you view yourself to be better than them. The way you treat people shows what type a person you are, far more than your name/family.
This, not only contradicts the racist belief that only white people have morals, but also shows Cal as an almost maternal figure to Scout; she teaches her valuable lessons and helps her to understand others- just like a mother would.
She was all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’t ready to come.
This quote truly shows how the novel is from Scout’s perspective and the way we see Cal here demonstrates, not necessarily how she is, but the way Scout views her which are two different things.
Demonstrates how Scout’s perspective and view of Cal changes and matures throughout the novel as she begins to understand her more.
I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.
This shows how Scout sees Cal at the start of the novel- less as a human being and more as a force of nature, winning their ‘battles’ because she has might on her side.
Calpurnia bent down and kissed me. I ran along, wondering what had come over her. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it.
Because Scout is caught in a tunnel of her own vision, so to speak, and so cannot see that Cal is hard on her because she care for her, like Atticus, but just shows it in a different way.
“Cal,” I asked, “why do you talk nigger-talk to the—to your folks when you know it’s not right?”
When Scout and Jem are taken to First Purchase Church, they see a different side to Cal, for one she talks different and they cannot see why she does so.
This is difficult for them as Atticus is always able to behave the same on the streets as he is at home- something which Cal can’t do.
Links back to her lesson to Scout about Walter Cunningham as well as hilighting racial divide: Atticus is praised for being the same everywhere, whereas Cal isn’t able to.
The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages.
The fact that Cal has a life outside their household had never dawned on Scout before, and teaches her that the Word doesn’t necessarily revolve around her.
It also gives Cal more of a personality and moves her away from the stereotype a the ‘wise black woman’.
“What’s your birthday Cal?”
“Were you from the landing?”
Scout begins to ask Cal more about her personal life. But, whilst Cal shares facts about her life, we never really know how she feels about them. So, even though the novel begins to give Cal more of a personality: how much of it gives Cal an identity, and how much is she still held as the role of wise black woman?
